Thy Bed of Crimson Joy
by blackcoffee1
Summary: Minerva reflects on her relationship with Hermione and how it came to a dramatic end. Femslash.


Thy Bed of Crimson Joy  
  
Nothingness surrounds me. Students are seated scattered around, chatting, some flirting carelessly or playing cards, a strong grip lies on my arm, parchments are carelessly strewn on the floor. The room is, if not a hive of activity, at least a pool of bubbling young life. I am full of nothing. Noises mix into hollow silence; although I know they are present I see nothing of the room but for one thing. It's cliché to say it, but it's you.  
  
You. You are not a beauty, of that I am the first to admit. Before we became close I wouldn't even had said you were attractive, maybe even unattractive if I were feeling particularly blunt. Those were the days when I liked men my own age or older, blushing as a male prefect brushed passed close by in the days when I too was a student here. Then I liked muscular, hero types, the usual stuff. You are not the usual, and I still cannot be sure of what I am feeling. I'm a fool, I know the intensity of my own emotions, well past are the days of fluctuating hormones, and yet strangely I feel detached enough from them to think that they may be just the prescribed feelings of a woman past the peak of her life, the curve of youth falling sharply away, without the safety of a long marriage to fall, comfortable, into. Who else do I have to fantasise about than you? I also consider that this may just be lust, lust after the only thing available, and not love at all. Afterall, hormones can make you believe that what you feel is worth dying for when really, once you have it, you regret it. I can say all this and yet I still cannot let it go. Fool fool fool.  
  
Let me qualify. You are not the new handsome Italian DADA professor, nor the enigmatic Head Boy, older than his years or one of my long-time colleagues. No you are the girl who sits hunched at the front of my class a huddle of robes and bushy hair. Yes, I said girl, but don't presume anything, I consider myself a woman who is confused about her orientation purely due to a lack of contact in her life. I always was ridiculously clinical about matters such as these. Matters of the heart, some might say, not I. It has become debatable over the past years just where my heart is located, or even whether it has faded out of existence altogether. Certainly I have a muscular pump the size of a clenched fist just to the left of the centre of my chest. Is this my heart? This pulsating, blood drenched, organ? This pain?  
  
The beginning is always the best place to start from and as such that is where my story shall commence. As an academically able pupil it was natural for you, in all your overly enthusiastic adolescence and yearning for knowledge and approval, to form close relationships with your superiors. Close that is, in the sense that your professors became fond of you; you completed small tasks and perhaps even stayed after school hours to discuss academic matters with them. In other words, you became many a professors' favourite student. Mine also. As your Head of House it could be argued that I had an even closer bond with you than that of my colleagues. Often, you would visit my private rooms with petty concerns, trifling worries that are common during childhood. I would listen and give friendly advice. But.  
  
Soon our, I hesitate to call it a relationship, became more tactile. Placing my hand on your shoulder in encouragement, one-armed hugs when you cried; once even a quick peck on the cheek at Christmas. I feared that I had gone too far, and yet, yet I still could not give up. Soon, sooner than perhaps would be normally plausible, I crossed that line. To think that then I considered a hug to be disgustingly over-familiar. Ha.  
  
You were fifteen then, I remember, so young. The bloom of youth was at that stage when, like a rose, it was most beautiful. Not yet at the peak of its growth but on the cusp, the petals just beginning to fan out from the bud. Young, ripe, perfect. I felt a hunger grow inside of me as your body filled out inside of your robes. My heart clenched, chest heaving to supply enough oxygen to my brain, foggy with lust. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Help me.  
  
It pains me to recount the preliminaries. Some might say that what I did was manipulative; I took advantage of your naivety, held sway over your virginal heart so that you felt things for me that you wouldn't normally. Perhaps I did, but what is that to me? What do I care for the judgement of others after the pleasures I have tasted? Now I could drink hot blood.  
  
I turn my now hardened, darker, eye on the world. Rather than making me lighter, more carefree, your love brought out the worst in me. After one bite at those fruitful lips I only desired more. Then yet more. Lips were no longer enough, perhaps I forced you to go further than you would have liked, perhaps I didn't. I no longer held your feelings in high esteem, ruled solely by the wants of my too frail flesh. My appetite grew by what it fed on, and what I fed on was you. I fed and fed and fed, greedy for your touch.  
  
Well, sooner or later, it was inevitable that you would find my affections suffocating. You were young but I had drained you of all youth with my insatiable desire. Other members of your house began to notice the change; I even began to fear that your eye had begun to wander to greener pastures. Let it, I thought. Carelessness grew in me like a disease. Nothing can touch me now. Oh foolish, foolish heart! I should have known.  
  
Known that nothing lasts forever, as our flesh melted together as did the fierce bond that had joined us at first. Hungers satisfied, what remained of us? But it was not this that ended me. You I could have kept forever I am sure, till the bloom of youth had long faded from your cheek, I could have tied you to me; could have.  
  
Now, I stand in front of the packed common room, your round hazel eyes averted to the floor. This perhaps is the greatest blow of all. Dumbledore has his hand wrapped around my upper arm, his grip far steelier than perhaps you would expect from a man of his age. I expected nothing less. His eyes are full of disgust, disappointment, and the hardest to stomach of all, pity. Bastard. How dare he pity me? After all I have achieved in less than a year? How dare he pity the woman that I used to be? Oh, it was not just that poor wounded soul Snape who evoked this martyr's sympathy. Oh no, I too was benevolently taken under his gracious wing. Thought he could change me, suppress what I truly was underneath a stern exterior, build a mask for me as he had others. Well it worked once but lightning never strikes twice Albus darling. I raise my chin defiantly. I had been about to say my goodbyes to you before being removed, but he outmanoeuvred me to the last. Very well. The room has grown silent with anticipation so I will leave with what pride I have left. I do not say goodbye. As I depart your eyes remain on the floor. I know why you cannot bear to look upon me. My chest tightens with anger, or is that pain? Something in my eyes blurs my vision of the room. Gryfindors swim as I leave. Fool. Stupid, stupid fool.  
  
Well, the darkness comes upon us all at some time or other, it just so happens that mine came a little before it was due. Given the chance, there's nothing I would change. Would I still pursue you? Would I still admit my crimes? Would I still laugh in the face of those who thought they could restrain me? Yes, yes, yes. Given the chance, would I turn back time, go to you at some quiet hour of the night, take you into the moonlight and tell you how I truly felt, underneath all the layers, the haughtiness and bravado, in my heart of hearts? No. I would rather die than face the merest possibility of.........of.........truth. I am glad not to have to look at myself in the mirror of your eyes for any longer. The Dementors will find me a poor kisser when the time comes.  
  
( I would like to thank the poem below for inspiring me, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet, my favourite play, which some of you may have noticed that I quoted a few bits from. Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think...  
  
O Rose, thou art sic! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.  
  
William Blake. ) 


End file.
